Gig Economy

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Cutting my own hair saves money 
better put toward a bill. I look presentable enough 
in virtual meetings, a genial blur.

Invoices. Empty correspondence. I’m not clever 
wearing this mask of inflexible competence. I live in bed
where I work and eat poorly while I work and dream. 

If I died now in arrears, and here of all places
(mattress, office, psych ward, coffin),

I’ll never have cared for a house cat of my own—
uppity, mercurial, impish, soft, private, unbothered—

so human-like in his affections and strangeness—
a companion named Sargent 

with twitchy, sensitive ears even at rest
who could mourn a little before biting my dead face to survive.





Appears in This Elegance (Boa Editions, 2026)

Audio: Derrick Austin reads “Gig Economy”

Photo Credit: Drake Konow

Derrick Austin is the author of three poetry collections: This Elegance (Boa Editions 2026), Tenderness (Boa Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (Boa Editions, 2016). He has had poems and essays commissioned by The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The New Museum, Craft Contemporary, The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, The Brick (formerly LAXART), The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He lives in Chicago.

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"Gig Economy" by Derrick Austin